With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of travel related websites, more and more consumers are purchasing travel related products such as hotel accommodations on-line. The Internet advantageously allows consumers to access vast amounts of data regarding the products and services offered by many different providers. It is often desirable to display such data to consumers in a coherent and easily understood manner.
One approach to display a wide range of travel related product data is through the provision of matrix displays such as those shown in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0125994 A1. In particular, this published patent application describes a hotel distance matrix display for displaying hotel data in response to a user performing an on-line search for hotel accommodations. Along the vertical axis of the hotel distance matrix display, a parameter representing the distance between a hotel and a point of interest is provided. A row heading for each row in the matrix indicates the distance range between the hotels retrieved in the search results and the designated point of interest (e.g. 0-1 mile, 1-5 miles, 5-10 miles, etc.). Along the horizontal axis are separate columns which represent hotels falling under certain hotel ratings according to a 1-5 star (*-*****) hotel rating scale. Various data element cells are defined by the intersecting rows and columns of the matrix. Thus, the data element cells in the hotel distance matrix represent room rates at various hotels which meet the distance and hotel rating criteria identified in the matrix headings for the particular data element cell.
At times however, consumers searching for a hotel may not be aware of particular points of interest in a town or city and thus, they perform searches identifying just a general location (e.g. town or city) of interest rather than specific points of interest. In such situations, some consumers may have difficulty deciphering a displayed hotel distance matrix due to the matrix not always providing a clear starting point for each distance segment and identifying the direction of each hotel in proximity from the starting point. Therefore, a need exists to improve the display of travel related product information in response to an on-line search request for such products.